“History making” hijabi model steps down from L’Oreal campaign after her Twitter comments come to light

The other day HuffPo put up one of its usual hijabi-extolling posts, noting that model Amena Khan “made history” by being in a campaign for L’Oreal hair products—while wearing a hijab. I wasn’t going to post about it, as there’s not much new here beyond the usual “hijabi-is-a-hero” palaver, but developments yesterday changed that (see below). Click on the screenshot to go to the article:

As the article notes, “A blogger, model and co-founder of Ardere Cosmetics, Khan has called the new collaboration ‘game changing.’ She is the first woman who wears a hijab to be featured in a major mainstream hair ad.”

Well, you might wonder why L’Oreal would want to use a woman who covers her hair to advertise shampoo and conditioner. Khan explains it in the HuffPo video below:

Okay, fair enough. And, as Maajid Nawaz explains in this short video, although the decision to use a woman who covers her hair to advertise hair products seems weird, it’s based on financial calculations.

If L’Oreal wants to do this, fine. But what bothers me is the usual tactic of making a hijabi into some kind of hero. In this case, though, it’s a bit hypocritical. After all, why do Muslims wear the hijab? As I’ve discussed before, and as you can see on “Rules related to covering“—an Islamic website that mandates codes of dress—by and large the hijab is worn as a religiously-mandated sign of modesty: to hide a woman’s hair. The premise is that the sight of hair will arouse uncontrollable lust in men, and then bad things will ensue. The Muslim rules, which are patriarchal, deem it the woman’s responsibility to avoid exciting men by looking attractive.

But it’s not just the hair that should be covered: women must avoid any adornment or beautification that calls attention to them:

Their face and hands must not have any kind of beautification (zinat) on them.

Well, Khan wears so much makeup—including lipstick, eye shadow, eyeliner, blush, nail polish (also forbidden) and other products that women use that I’m not aware of—that it looks as if it’s been laid on with a trowel. (See other photos of her on her Twitter account). She also shapes her eyebrows, also a forbidden enhancement. Have a look:

At the same time that she’s adhering to Muslim custom and covering her hair out of modesty, she’s doing all she can to call attention to her beauty,—to her face and nails and body. Well, she’s a model, and that’s what they do. But isn’t it a bit hypocritical to wear a garment whose purpose is to avoid exciting lust, while doing the exact oppostie with your face, hands, and feet? (Khan often wears sandals, a display of feet that is prohibited by the same dictates that prohibit showing hair).

I’ve said all this before, and felt no need yesterday to say to call out this dichotomy again, but then it was discovered that Khan has a rather dubious history of posting anti-Israeli messages on Twitter. These are not just criticisms of Israel occupying the West Bank or the like, but contentions that Israel has no right to exist—a sentiment that, I think, borders on anti-semitism. Because of these, Khan pulled out of the campaign (it’s not clear to me whether she was actually fired.) You can see reports on her background and withdrawal at the BBC as well as Israelly Cool.

What did Amena Khan say on Twitter? Well, she’s deleted her tweets, but some were captured by the Daily Wire:

Another:

I won’t get into who is the deliberate murderer of children or whether Israel is an “illegal state”, but let’s just agree these tweets are clearly “anti-Israel”, and pretty much state that Israel has no right to exist.

When these tweets were revealed, Khan to “withdrew” from the campaign, offering a weird apology that said she didn’t really mean what she said about Israel:

L’Oreal, whether out of a dislike for Khan’s views or simple business acumen, was not reluctant to accept her “withdrawal.” From the BBC:

A spokesperson for L’Oreal Paris told Newsbeat: “We have recently been made aware of a series of tweets posted in 2014 by Amena Kahn, who was featured in a UK advertising campaign.

“We appreciate that Amena has since apologised for the content of these tweets and the offence they have caused.

“L’Oreal Paris is committed to tolerance and respect towards all people. We agree with her decision to step down from the campaign.”

I have to admit that there’s a bit of Schadenfreude here: while HuffPo and L’Oreal (and other places) were extolling this woman as a pathbreaker, a history maker, and even a kind of hero, at the same time she had a background of espousing hatred verging on the anti-Semitic. And to extol her “Muslim-ness” for wearing the hijab, while ignoring her attempts to call as much attention as possible to her beauty, smacks of either ignorance or hypocrisy.

I put a comment on the HuffPo site last night saying they should update their report, but of course they haven’t done it despite widespread reporting about Khan’s withdrawal from the beauty campaign. (Curiously, they’ve removed her Instagram posts from the site.) Nor has HuffPo US posted any report of her withdrawal, although HuffPo UK has. But even HuffPo UK’s report is bizarre, putting scare quotes around Khan’s “anti-Israel” tweets:

A model who became the first woman in a hijab to feature in advertising for hair brand L’Oreal has stepped down from the “game changing” campaign after a series of “anti-Israel” tweets emerged.

She wrote on Instagram of her regret over tweets dating from 2014, which had prompted accusations she held “anti-Israel” views.

Why the scare quotes around “anti-Israel”? Does that mean it’s questionable whether the tweets shown above really were against Israel? That’s the only reason I can imagine for the quotes, and it’s shameful. There’s no question about what those tweets say!

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Meanwhile, over at LBC Radio (“Leading Britain’s Conversation”), broadcaster James O’Brien, who appears to be an anti-Brexit liberal, makes clear to a Muslim mother why she shouldn’t force her eight-year-old daughter to wear the hijab. Click on the screenshot to get to the article and the 4.5-minute video. Remember that while women in Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia have no choice about wearing the hijab (and, in Iran, demonstrated in the streets when the theocracy forced veiling in 1979), the issue of “choice” in Western countries, where girls are veiled very young, is often problematic.

My final remarks simply echo the sentiments of Alishba Zarmeen, a feminist activist from Pakistan:

One possible counterargument for people like Khan is that some women veil not out of modesty, but simply as a symbol of their religious faith. Fair enough, but, given the above, that’s like saying that some people waving the Confederate flag are only doing so as a symbol of their “Southern heritage.” Remember the “fucking history and traditional use of that symbol”!

I think her point was (and it was in the video): if you believe that you should only take care of your hair when other people see it, then you are saying you only care about the parts of you that other people see.

Also, women don’t generally wear the hijab at home or at family gatherings.

I lived in Tunisia in the mid 1980s and drinking alcohol was officially haram – strictly forbidden by the religious mores then (not sure if it is today). Of course most men drank and to accommodate them the president of Tunisia, Hamid Bourgiba, had a son who owned the country’s only distillery and brewery.

You could tell the ones who’d just bought booze as they walked furtively away from the souk, eyes cast down, with their bags clinking loudly. It was funny.

From the Wikipedia article: “In many Hasidic groups, sheitels are avoided, as they can give the impression that the wearer’s head is uncovered. In other Hasidic groups, women wear some type of covering over the sheitel to avoid this misconception, for example a scarf or a hat.”

Ha! they cover their real hair with fake hair then they cover the fake hair so people know it’s fake hair. How far do you have to shove a Q-tip into your ear for this to make sense?

The post raises the question of whether it is hypocritical for the model to use so much makeup while at the same time covering her hair for purposes of maintaining her modesty. I do not think Khan would consider what she does hypocritical. She is probably a literalist in regard to how she interprets her faith. For her, she cannot do anything her faith forbids; anything it doesn’t explicitly forbid is okay.

We see this same phenomenon among Orthodox Jews. They are forbidden to do many things on the Sabbath, but it is okay to get a non-Jew to do it, the so-called “Shabbos Goy.” They would not view this situation as hypocritical. In researching the Shabbos Goy, I discovered a person who contends that many Jews do not understand what can and cannot be asked of a non-Jew on the Sabbath. Apparently, the general rule is that Jews cannot ask non-Jews to do something on the Sabbath that they are forbidden to do themselves. Who knew? But, there are many exceptions to the general rule. As the author explains the dos and do nots, it became clear to me that this aspect of Jewish law is more complex that the U.S. Senate’s rules of procedure. Such is religion.

Yes I think you are right that both are examples of a legalistic interpretation of their respective faiths.

However, recognizing and naming that sort of behavior doesn’t make it any less theologically silly.

Reminds me of Sherri Tepper’s Raising the Stones, in which a prophet shows up and says “Don’t let’em mess with your heads, boys.” Sparking hundreds of years of warfare over proper male headdress and whether cutting hair is okay. A fictional example, but IMO the point is relevant: reading literally /= reading for comprehension, sometimes obviously and laughably so.

“a symbol of their ‘Southern heritage’” — Well, we certainly heard that bullshit for decades. Let us hope it doesn’t take anything so drastic as the massacre at Mother Emanuel Church, which finally resulted in that rag being dragged down from atop statehouses across the former Confederacy, to liberate western Muslim women from compunctions over doffing the hijab.

There are several other southern states that flew the confederate flag — either standing alone, or incorporated into their state flags — over government buildings to protest the end of Jim Crow. It’s just the last two that finally came down after the Mother Emanuel massacre.

And my relationship with the American South is more a matter of love/hate. There are many aspects of Southern culture I adore; it’s only the smoldering embers of racism that the Republican Party routinely fans to life with its “Southern strategy” that I abhor.

When I see a confederate flag flying anywhere it pisses me off and I am White. Imagine how African Americans feel about it. Imagine how veterans of the north from civil war times would feel about it if still alive? Most upsetting is to see the damn thing flying in the north because what else could that be but racism. And just another Trump fan because you know, Trump was a big fan of southern NY in the civil war.

I read a post the other day where someone accidentally cut someone off in their car and rather than flip the bird to them, the other drive did the thumbs down sign.
They said it made them feel much worse so I am going to do this from now on.
Try the thumbs down signal on your own and see if you can tell a difference.

I see the hijab and thick make-up combination very often. Like with Christians and probably other faiths, religious hypocrisy or cherrypicking is common. It seems the purpose of God is to be the ultimate rationalizer — he hates gays, non-believers etc so it’s o.k. to hate them too (the actual reasoning is reverse).

Like American Bible thumpers, God cares about specific things when convenient, and has modernized His views otherwise; also, however convenient. A bit of costly sacrifice must remain, especially around matters that are great to keep the ingroup/outgroup going, and to advertise the faith. American Evangelicals have a few token issues that are kept up at all costs, how else do you keep the Red Tribe alive, even if everything else is discarded and forgotten, and so it seems, is it for Muslims, too.

AIUI humans have loads of neurons dedicated to recognizing and interpreting other humans’ facial expressions. Forcing someone to hide their face as with a burqa literally dehumanizes them – prevents others from interacting with them as we are biologically adapted to do – in a way that other forms of clothing and apparel don’t.

So, yeah, IMO burqas and things like that cross a line that a western overcoat or bikini doesn’t. And I think there’s real, empirical, biological evidence backing that up.

I dislike her comments. I dislike the constant demand that sports stars, actors, singers, models etc. behave as role models more. Were I a woman shopping for cosmetics, these sorts of comments would certainly make me think less of the model (as they do now), but they would not change my purchasing behavior. L’Oreal firing her or removing her from the campaign also wouldn’t change my behavior, as that’s their business prerogative.

As chance would have it, I use the L’Oreal shampoo and conditioner that is in this ad campaign, the ElVive line. It really is the best line of hair care products that I’ve ever tried.
Muslim women do wash and style their hair, so from L’Oreal’s point of view, it’s a market to target. I don’t think they’re particularly pro-hijab.
The amount of make-up that this model is wearing is what would be expected in an ad campaign by a cosmetics company. Oftentimes, the still photos are air-brushed, as I suspect the one of this model is above.

IMHO, you could still stay with L’Oréal and use their Ever Pure line. Yes, a bit more pricey. But, no sulfates and washes out so much cleaner and clearer. This new line is simply a repackage of the old one before it. Same old same old. Not bad, just okay.

I am very confused about how the cosmetics industry keeps trying to be “new” by simply changing a package. In this case, the model is new, the product really is not. The packaging merely changed. Yet, the model has changed also. Spin it around and around and it’s the same product they had before this new campaign.

What is it about women’s hair that makes it so provocative of male lust? For centuries, various cultures have decided that modest women
and especially wives must cover their heads. That’s why nuns used to cover their heads as they were doing what traditional wives did, and they were wives of Christ. Very often, when the heads were covered, clothing had to be exceedingly modest too: often black (color of death) shapeless like sacks, or burqas. Look at some photos of Greek, Turkish,etc. village women. So, skin must be provocative also. I guess women could be shut in at home. Oh yeah! That’s done. And, in some cultures, even within the household women have their own separate areas to live in which no male may enter if not family. Kind of like a harem.

As a freshman in college, I went to a conservative religious school in which girls were not supposed to wear make up. Some wore no make up, but wore girdles and padded bras (tells you how very old I am). And, many wore
make up deftly applied to look natural. So much for the rules.